(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for creating an object, by means of a laser treatment, from at least two different powder materials, and a facility for the implementation of said method. The term laser treatment refers to sintering or fusion.
(2) Brief Description of the Related Art
In the prior art, methods using the principle of generating successive powder beds, using a scraper or a roller, are known. To this end, reference should particularly be made to the teaching of FR-A-2 856 614. This known solution consists of extracting, from a storage area, a quantity of powder material, and moving it to an area for spreading a thin layer of said material.
A laser treatment, such as sintering or fusion, is then performed on this powder material so as to form a first layer. It is then possible to form an additional layer, extending above the first layer, the production whereof is described above. By iterating this process, a three-dimensional object formed of various layers is produced, each layer being a cross-section of said object.
However, this known solution has some drawbacks. In this way, the trajectories and positions of the particles or grains of powder material, in the plane of the first layer formed, cannot be controlled. In other words, only the thickness of said layer is controlled, but not the distribution thereof in the two other spatial directions.
In this way, it proves to be impossible to produce at least one thin layer of a powder material, having a predefined geometry, for example of the complex type, in the plane of said layer. Obviously, the presence in a single layer of a plurality of powder materials cannot be envisaged either in a satisfactory manner since there would be a partial or total mixture of a plurality of materials in the same layer.
Moreover, an alternative solution is known, whereby a powder is projected locally onto a mounting, particularly by means of a spray gun. It is conceivable that, under these conditions, it can be envisaged to deposit a plurality of different material in a single layer, i.e. for a single height area. However, the various areas of the layer, occupied by said separate materials, do not display sufficient geometric precision.